But it was not all plain sailing for BBC political programmes boss Rob Burley as he had to put up with a number of disgruntled men (and a few women) suddenly discovering that they cared deeply about equal gender representation on TV.

What was going on? How on Earth did the BBC end up with an all-female panel? If it was not by design, one person asked, did they just “walk of [sic] the streets and volunteer?”.

Not quite said Burley, who is not known for letting things lie on Twitter. And then he told all about how it happened:

“We just invited lots of people and the best we got were women. Sorry.”

Meanwhile The Guardian had a more wounding attack line. In an otherwise positive preview of the show in today’s paper, media editor Jim Waterson reckons that “the chatty guest format now has more in common with Loose Women than Newsnight”.